Why Priests?

by Garry Wills (Viking)

Wills sets out to persuade his fellow-Catholics that the priesthood is both unnecessary and un-Christian. Jesus, he writes, was not a priest but a prophet, and he didn’t institute the divine priesthood. These claims, on which the Catholic hierarchy still bases its right to exist, have, Wills demonstrates, a dubious foundation in Scripture and in history. He attributes priests’ continued hold over their flocks to their singular power to administer the Eucharist. Following Augustine, Wills argues that the bread Jesus spoke of at the Last Supper was in fact the entire body of believers, who together form “one loaf.” It is this egalitarian spirit that Wills accuses the priesthood of betraying, establishing a “monopoly on the sacred” that has made it difficult for Catholics to believe unholy things of their holy men. Wills is not attempting to break with the Church or to dismantle it. Rather, he wants to assure the faithful that they can get by without priests. “If we need fellowship in belief,” he writes, “we have each other.” ♦

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